101 Books to Read Before You Die discussion

Discuss parts 7-9.

I'm very impressed with how many creative ways these men came up with to work toward equal freedoms and to just stay focused and mentally alert while in prison. I can't imagine how disheartening it would have been, especially with bogus charges, blocked attempts at seeing family, different meals for different races, etc. It must have been devastating not to be able to attend his mother's and son's funerals, simply because someone chose not to allow it.

Again, he spends time admiring the younger generation that comes to join them in prison, while also recognizing some of their more liberal ideals and seeing himself in his earlier years reflected in them. He's able to understand their drive and see common ground in this, while also seeing where he's had personal growth and policy change in his own mind over the years. It appears he tried to keep a good balance, which isn't easy in the outside world, let alone in prison for so many years.

This is one section that I wanted so much more. He is telling his story from a long distance. We do not feel the fear, frustration, anger, hopelessness. It almost seemed too smooth and too easy at times. Robin Island was supposed to be one of the worse prisons in the world. But, I never feel that.

I know nothing about Robben Island beyond what he shares in the book, but I agree, in some ways he makes it seem not too bad. Maybe glossing over some of the more sordid details? But for what purpose?

I wonder if it was a matter of memories being softened by the passage of time. I heard a report a few months back on a psychology study that showed that our emotional evaluation of an experience, either something painful like a medical procedure or positive like a trip is the sum of the peak moment and the final moment. So, if a person had a medical procedure, for example, that was painful initially, but fairly easy for the final quarter of the procedure, the patient will say it was not so bad. If the painful part was at the end, even if not as intense or as long as the other one, the patient will evaluate it as awful. Things got so much easier toward the end of his incarceration, I wonder if that skewed his entire perception of the experience. I was pretty active in protesting apartheid when I was younger. I followed all the reports closely. I had read quite a bit of the terrible conditions and the brutal treatment of prisoners during that time.

Hm, interesting. Makes sense, though: that's why eyewitness accounts of events are so often skewed and the courts can only rely on them so far, because people experience and remember things so differently, and with the passage of time, you start to doubt your own memories, and maybe his were tainted by those later years or even by his colleagues' recollections.

I suspect that they were influenced by the dramatic improvement in conditions in the final years of Robin Island and even his final period of incarceration in that lovely villa. I thought it was odd, maybe even a little creepy, that he designed his home on that villa. It felt a bit like Stockhome syndrome.